Vathek; An Arabian Tale

By William Beckford

Vathek; An Arabian Tale William Beckford - Vathek; An Arabian Tale is a Gothic novel written by William Beckford, and first published in 1786. It tells the story of Caliph Vathek, the ninth caliph of the Abassides, who buys some glowing swords from a travelling merchant. Wanting to decipher the messages on them, he invites the merchant to dinner. However, he gets no answers and locks up the merchant, who somehow disappears in the night. Finally he finds a scholar who translates the lettering, but the next morning, the message on the swords changes. Led by an insatiable thirst, Vathek goes to a fountain to drink and comes across the merchant again, who goes back to the Court with him. Afer this, things get weirder, with the merchant being transformed into a ball and being kicked by all the townspeople, child sacrifices, and Islamic dwarfs - all in the name of Vathek trying to gain supernatural powers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Phoemixx Classics Ebooks
• Release date: Dec 24, 2021
• ISBN: 9783986771867

William Beckford

William Beckford (1760-1844) was an English novelist, art collector, slaveowner, and politician. Born in London, he inherited a massive fortune from his father, a former Lord Mayor of London, as well as an estate in Wiltshire and sugar plantations in Jamaica with around 3,000 African slaves. He lived in ease and luxury, studying music with Mozart and drawing with Alexander Cozens while leading a semi-open bisexual lifestyle. Inspired by a Grand Tour of Europe, Beckford published a travel narrative, Dreams, Waking Thoughts and Incidents (1783). Several years later, he wrote Vathek (1786), a popular Gothic novel originally drafted in French. He earned a reputation as an obsessive art collector and eccentric builder, burning through his fortune at an alarming rate. Throughout his life, he owned and sold original works by Turner, Blake, Velázquez, Lippi, and the Bellini family.

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Memoir. By William North

William Beckford, the author of the following celebrated Eastern tale, was born in 1760, and died in the spring of 1844, at the advanced age of eighty-four years.  It is to be regretted, that a man of so remarkable a character, did not leave the world some record of a life offering points of interest different from that of any of his contemporaries, from the peculiarly studious retirement and eccentric avocations in which it was chiefly passed.  Such a memoir would have formed a curious contrast with that of the late M. de Chateaubriand, who, born nearly at the same period, outlived but by a few years, the strange Englishman, whose famous romance forms a brilliant ornament to French literature, which even Atala is unlikely to outlive in the memory of Chateaubriand’s countrymen.  All men of genius should write autobiographies.  Such works are inestimable lessons to posterity.  As it is, there are few men, of whom it is more difficult to compose an elaborate and detailed history than the author of "

Vathek."  From such scanty sources as are open to us, the reader must be content with a few striking facts and illustrations, which may serve to convey some idea of the idiosyncrasy of a man, whose whole life was a sort of mystery, even to his personal acquaintances.

His great-great-grandfather was lieutenant-governor and commander of the forces in Jamaica; and his grandfather president of the council in the same island.  His father, though not a merchant, as has been represented, but a large landed proprietor, both in England and the West Indies, was lord mayor of London, and distinguished himself in presenting an address to the king, George the Third,—by a spirited retort to his majesty,—who had the ill-breeding to treat discourteously a deputation which the lord mayor headed.  The portraits of Alderman Beckford, and his more celebrated son, were painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds.  The former died in 1770, leaving the subject of this memoir the wealthiest commoner in England.

No pains were spared on the education of the young Croesus—the lords Chatham and Camden being consulted by his father on that subject.  Besides Latin and Greek, he spoke five modern languages, and wrote three with facility and elegance.  He read Persian and Arabic, designed with great skill, and studied the science of music under the great Mozart.

At the age of eighteen he visited Paris, and was introduced to Voltaire.  On taking leave of me, said Beckford, he placed his hand on my head, saying, ‘There, young Englishman, I give you the blessing of a very old man.’  Voltaire was a mere skeleton—a bony anatomy.  His countenance I shall never forget.

His first literary production, Memoirs of Extraordinary Painters, was written at the early age of seventeen.  It would appear, that the old housekeeper at

Fonthill, was in the habit of edifying visitors to its picture gallery by a description of the paintings, mainly derived from her own fertile imagination.  This suggested to our author, the humorous idea of composing a catalogue of suppositious painters with histories of each, equally fanciful and grotesque.  Henceforward, the old housekeeper had a printed guide (or rather, mis-guider) to go by, and could discourse at large on the merits of

Og of Bashan! Waterslouchy of Amsterdam! and Herr Sucrewasser of Vienna! their wives and styles!  As for the country squires, etc., they, Beckford tells us, took all for gospel.

Vathek,—the superb Vathek, which Lord Byron so much admired, and on which he so frequently complimented the author,—Vathek, the finest of Oriental romances, as Lallah Rookh is the first of Oriental poems, by the pen of a Frank, was written and published before our author had completed his twentieth year, it having been composed at a single sitting!  Yes, for three days and two nights did the indefatigable author persevere in his task.  He completed it, and a serious illness was the result.  What other literary man ever equalled this feat of rapidity and genius?

Vathek was originally written in French, of which its style is a model.  The translation which follows, is not by the author himself, though he expressed perfect satisfaction with it.  It was originally published in 1786.  For splendour of description, exquisite humour, and supernatural interest and grandeur, it stands without a rival in romance.  In as thoroughly Oriental keeping, Hope’s "

Anastasius, or Memoirs of a Modern Greek," which Beckford himself highly admired, can alone be compared with it.

Much of the description of Vathek’s palace, and even the renowned Hall of Eblis, was afterwards visibly embodied in the real Fonthill Abbey, of which wonders, almost as fabulous, were at one time reported and believed.

Fonthill Abbey, which had been destroyed by fire, and re-built during the life-time of the elder Beckford, was on account of its bad site demolished, and again re-built under the superintendence of our author himself, assisted by James Wyatt, Esq., the architect, with a magnificence that excited the greatest attention and wonder at the time.  The total outlay of building

Fonthill, including furniture, articles of virtu, etc., must have been enormous, not much within the million, as estimated by the Times.  A writer in the "

Athenæum" mentions £400,000 as the sum.  Beckford informed Mr. Cyrus Redding, that the exact cost of building

Fonthill was £273,000.

The distinguishing architectural peculiarity of Fonthill Abbey, was a lofty tower, 280 feet in height.  This tower was prominently shadowed forth in "

Vathek," and shows how strong a hold the idea had upon his mind.  Such was his impatience to see

Fonthill completed, that he had the works continued by torchlight, with relays of workmen.  During the progress of the building, the tower caught fire, and was partly destroyed.  The owner, however, was present, and enjoyed the magnificent burning spectacle.  It was soon restored; but a radical fault in laying the foundation, caused it eventually to fall down, and leave

Fonthill a ruin in the life-time of its founder.

Not so much his extravagant mode of life, which is the common notion, as the loss of two large estates in a law suit (the value of which may be inferred from the fact, that fifteen hundred slaves were upon them) induced our author to quit Fonthill, and offer it and its contents for public sale.  There was a general desire to see the interior of the palace, in which its lord had lived in a luxurious seclusion, so little admired by the curious of the fashionable world.  He is fortunate, says the Times of 1822, "who finds a vacant chair within twenty miles of

Fonthill; the solitude of a private apartment is a luxury which few can hope for. . . .  Falstaff himself could not 

take his ease at this moment within a dozen leagues of Fonthill. . . . The beds through the county are (literally) doing double duty—people who come in from a distance during the night must wait to go to bed until others get up in the morning. . . . Not a farm-house, however humble,—not a cottage near Fonthill, but gives shelter to fashion, to beauty, and rank; ostrich plumes, which, by their very waving, we can trace back to Piccadilly, are seen nodding at a casement window over a depopulated poultry-yard."

The costly treasures of art and virtu, as well as the furniture of the rich mansion, were scattered far and wide; and one of its tables served the writer of this memoir to scribble upon, when first stern necessity, or yet sterner ambition, urged him to add his mite to the Babel tower of literature.  At that table I first read "

Vathek."  I have read it often since, and every perusal has increased my admiration.

Nearly fifty years after the publication of Vathek, in 1835, Mr. Beckford published his Recollections of an Excursion to the Monasteries of Alcobaca and Batalha, which he had taken in 1795, together with an epistolatory record of his observations in Italy, Spain and Portugal, between the years 1780 and 1794.  These are marked, as he himself intimates, "with the bloom and heyday of youthful spirits and youthful confidence, at a period when the older order of things existed with all its picturesque

pomps and absurdities; when Venice enjoyed her Piombi and sub-marine dungeons; Prance her Bastille; the Peninsula her Holy Inquisition.  With none of those subjects, however, are the letters occupied—but with delineations of landscape, and the effects of natural phenomena.  These literary efforts appear to have exhausted their author’s productive powers; in a word, he seems soon to have been used-up," and then to have discontinued his search after new sensations, or to have been content to live without them.

After the sale of Fonthill, our author lived a considerable time in Portugal, and hence Lord Byron, who was fond of casting the shadow of his own imagination over every object, penned the well-known lines at Cintra:

"There thou, too, Vathek, England’s wealthiest son,

   Once formed thy paradise; as not aware

   Where wanton wealth her mightiest deeds hath done,

Meek peace, voluptuous lures, was ever wont to shun.

   Here didst thou dwell; here scenes of pleasure plan,

   Beneath yon mountain’s ever beauteous brow;

   But now, as if a thing

unblest by man,

   Thy fairy dwelling is as lone as thou! 

   Here giant weeds a passage scarce allow

   To halls deserted; portals gaping wide

   Fresh lessons to the thinking bosom; how

   Vain are the

pleasaunces on earth supplied,

Swept into wrecks anon by time’s ungentle tide."

These sombre verses contrast strangely with Beckford’s saying to Mr. Cyrus Redding, in his seventy-sixth year, that he had never felt a moments’ ennui in his life.

Beckford was in person scarcely above the middle height, slender, and well formed, with features indicating great intellectual power.  He was exactly one year younger than Pitt, the companion of his minority.  His political principles were popular, though it is recorded, that at a court ball on the Queen’s birth-day, in 1782, he, with Miss North, led up a country dance.  He sat in parliament, in his early years, both for Wells and Hendon, but retired on account of bad health.  This, however, he overcame by careful diet and exercise, as testified by his great bodily activity almost to the last.  He was a man of most extensive reading, and cultivated taste.

The last years of his life were passed at Bath—where he united two houses in Lansdown Crescent, by an arch thrown across the street, and containing his library, which was well selected, and very extensive.  Not far off, he again erected a tower, 180 feet high, of

which the following description was given at the time of his decease, by a correspondent of the Athenæum:—

"Mr. Beckford, at an early period of his residence there, erected a lofty tower, in the apartments of which were placed many of his choicest paintings and articles of virtu.  Asiatic in its style, with gilded lattices and blinds, or curtains, of crimson cloth, its striped ceilings, its minaret, and other accessories, conveyed the idea that the being who designed the place and endeavoured to carry out the plan, was deeply imbued with the spirit of that lonely grandeur and strict solitariness which obtains through all countries and among all people of the East.  The building was surrounded by a high wall, and entrance afforded to the garden in which the tower stood, by a door of small dimensions.  The garden itself was Eastern in its character.  Though comparatively circumscribed in its size, nevertheless were to be found within it, solitary walks and deep retiring shades, such as could be supposed

Vathek, the mournful and the magnificent, loved, and from the bowers of which might be expected would suddenly fall upon the ear, sounds of the cymbal and the dulcimer.  The building contained several apartments crowded